Re:Researchers crack open malware that hid for 5 years
by WalterBright on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @03:07PM
(#12264098)
Prohibitively expensive? That's how things have been done for decades. Only recently have manufacturers decided that everything should be redoable over the internet.
Re:Researchers crack open malware that hid for 5 years
by infinite8s on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @12:33PM
(#12262976)
Are you including the capability to control it over a network? Burning potentially unfixable 0-day exploits into ROM would probably be a non-starter.
Re:Researchers crack open malware that hid for 5 years
by WalterBright on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @03:10PM
(#12264115)
If you can update the firmware over a network, you have an uncloseable exploit vector.
ROMs are not unfixable. They do require physical access, though, which eliminates nearly all of the risk.
Re:Researchers crack open malware that hid for 5 years
by infinite8s on Wednesday August 10, 2016 @05:07PM
(#12264751)
Even if those updates require signature verification with a public key stored in ROM? I guess the signing key cold get out or you could patch the firmware to skip the signature check (the way the initial iPhone was jailbroken)
Re:Researchers crack open malware that hid for 5 years
by heavenlyhash on Wednesday August 17, 2016 @03:23PM
(#12307562)
We also literally just had the Windows key leaks within the last week. Un-updatable signing keys are still an uncloseable exploit vector. (And updatable signing keys are an uncloseable exploit vector. You can't win.)
Physical-access-only updates: yes please. We know what the security boundary is on those, and how to reset it.
In many cases that would probably be prohibitively expensive, but for a thermostat or a light switch, it should not be that difficult to do.